<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Let's move to Convair.

HM: Okay.

TI: And one question, why did you choose this company? Here you had the auto company...

HM: Okay.

TI: You mentioned the other ones in Detroit, but you also, you had opportunities at Boeing.

HM: Yeah.

TI: But you chose Convair. Why?

HM: Well, the tunnel was familiar. That was the one thing. I knew what I was getting into because it was very similar to the, to the U of W tunnel. In fact, if I closed my eyes and looked just at the tunnel test section I couldn't tell if it was U of W or Convair tunnel. Same color scheme, same windows, observation windows, same everything. Equipment, the data processing equipment, was kind of different. But anyway, I felt so comfortable with that, being able to get on with the test process quickly, that it gave me a sense of confidence that I could do this job with half my eyes closed, I guess. But -- and then the fact that they were so friendly. The guys that took me around were very, very friendly people, especially this person that I became good friends with later on. And he was one of the wind tunnel supervisors. And he had Nihonjin as student friends in college. And he made me feel very comfortable and at home. And he showed me all the different places in San Diego. And I felt very comfortable with the place. And --

TI: And this is almost in contrast to Hewlett-Packard, where you didn't feel as comfortable, although it might have been a really interesting job.

HM: Yeah. I probably would've been better selection for me from a salary standpoint and from stock options and the rest of the stuff. But I had such a apprehension about working with a Ph.D. that could go on and fill up a blackboard, and I'm still only one-third done trying to figure what he was trying to derive here. I got kind of scared at that situation.

TI: Okay. And then this Convair was very comfortable and familiar for you.

HM: Yeah. But it might've been too easy. It was not that much of a challenge. But, oh, I thought that was the best decision. And then -- well, I got married in my, end of my junior year. So anyway, my partner said she'd rather go to San Diego than Detroit, for one thing. And I had other options, too. But San Diego was the thing, the climate-wise was the thing that really gave her a fascination.

TI: Now, was your wife from Seattle or was she...

HM: Yeah.

TI: ...from California?

HM: No, she was from Seattle, yeah.

TI: Okay, all right.

HM: And, so anyway, we're, we had a house right on top of the hill overlooking the plant, and Lindbergh Field was right below us. And it was walking distance to go home for lunch. And that's what I used to do occasionally, but it was straight up. It was, I mean, it was a very steep slope. So it kept me in pretty good shape. But, maybe that's going back to my school days, when I used to go home for lunch.

TI: That's right.

HM: That, we lived right on top of the hill there. And we could see all the airplanes take off and land. Only problem was that we had a huge picture window looking out towards San Diego Bay. And when the F-106s, they used to take them off for the flight to Edwards for the delivery function and check-out for flight. And they used to make two a day, as a production run. And here these airplanes would sit at the end of the runway and get all the other passenger airplanes out of the flight corridor. And they would turn their afterburners on, and they would fly side-by-side down the runway. And then they would take off, full afterburners. Of course, they were flying at a horrendous rate. And when they did that, that window would shake maybe about an inch. I, I used to put my finger on the, into the middle of the window, and see how much deformation that was taking place. And it would be about an inch from the mid-point of that window for deformation. That's how much the window was shaking.

HM: Now, why would they have to go full afterburners? Were they just testing it out?

HM: Because they were trying to get out of the main flight corridor where their normal cruise and climb-to-cruise function was.

TI: Okay.

HM: So they would fly up, then take off and they'd be gone in just a minute or so. It was a high-performance airplane, and they, it's a delta wing, so you're using a lot of thrust to get off the ground. And you might have to -- you put on the afterburner and get out of the, out from under the slow speed regime. And, but it was a good place for watching airplanes if you were a spy. You could see the North Island Naval Station there and all the flight planners going over there, and then the Lindbergh Field. And you could watch the whole San Diego Naval Base operations from where we were sited.

And, but at that time we were working on a whole bunch of different airplanes, one of which was a seaplane, a jet ski airplane. And the first week I was there in San Diego, after we rented the house there, I was looking out the window, and this guy was bringing the airplane back to land in the San Diego Harbor, and he started porpoising. I could see him, just coming down to the, to the bay area. And he started porpoising, and all of a sudden he disappeared. I thought to myself, what the heck happened to that guy? And he just dove right in there. That was the end of that program. The navy quit making any plans for fighter airplane that they could launch as a float, float airplane. But it was a high-performance airplane. And we worked on quite a few of those airplanes in the wind tunnel, and quite, quite high-performance, high-mach number airplanes. But trying to get a float on an airplane was not an ideal thing to have because they compromise your entire design, aerodynamically as well as from a landing standpoint.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.